Last Days in India

I'm in Delhi now, getting ready to go to the airport soon - my trip is coming to a close.  Thank you for your interest and support!  I plan to continue my web presence here: scalingback.org - it'll be a site about various things but focusing on Bay Area locally produced food and solar energy.

I've spent the last week in Dharamsala, or actually a smaller town called Macleod Ganj just north of there.  There is a large Tibetan refugee community in the area, and the Dalai Lama calls Macleod Ganj home for parts of the year - it's the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.

Yes, this bull is in a graveyard, but he's not dead.

Cattle grazing at a dumpster.

Traveling in India

A couple more pictures from Varanasi:

My next destination was Delhi - the pictures below are from the Red Fort.

I had to escape the heat so I headed into the Himalayan foothills to a city called Shimla.

Bodhgaya and Varanasi, India

From Kolkata I traveled to a town called Bodhgaya.  I'm starting to understand what some guidebooks are referring to when they talk about the "crush of humanity" in India...

Bodhgaya is known as the place where prince Gautama Siddhartha achieved enlightenment and became Buddha while sitting under a pipal tree.  That was reportedly in 598 BC.  A descendent of the tree is shown below in front of a temple built to honor the occasion. 

Here is another view of the tree, known as the Bodhi tree.

In the temple complex around the Bodhi tree:

From Bodhgaya I traveled by train to a city called Varanasi.  Here's some video from my ride in a three-wheeled rickshaw from the train station into the town:



The streets are very narrow in Varanasi but that's understandable as this is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.  The settlement here dates back to 1200 BC.

Varanasi is located along the Ganges river - the stairways down to the river are called ghats.

Every evening there is a ceremony at this particular ghat:

Here is a short video clip of the crowd around the ceremony: